Michael, welcome to the forum!
I heard a bit about you and I’m very happy you’re here!
I believe your knowledge will be a big asset for WWII in Color Forum.
Looking forward to read your posts!
Salute and kind regards,
Lancer44
But the majority of those were also after Dieppe. Thus the allies would most likely have had an extremely costly beach landing somewhere before they realised what they were doing wrong - and Dieppe was at least a small raid rather than a full scale invasion.
Thanks for the welcome - I’ve been watching the site for some time now.
Is there any evidence that any lessons learned from Dieppe were applied in North Africa, Sicily, or Anzio?
Few if any of the lessons would be relevant. Dieppe was an opposed beach landing - as Overlord would have to be given the condition of the Atlantic wall and the logistical requirement to land in Northern France. None of the operations you’ve mentioned were opposed in the initial stages of the landings. For example, at Salerno in the first day of the landings the allies suffered 13 dead out of 36,000 soldiers landed.
The lessons applied to Overlord that could not have been learned anywhere other than Dieppe were IMHO:
- The need for fire support to be always available on call to the ground troops, not just preplanned.
- The need for truly massive fire support firepower (from sea and air).
- The requirement to attack a defended beach in overwhelming force.
- Assaulting troops need specialised armoured vehicles.
- Capturing an intact port from the sea was not practical. Thus the mulberry harbours and huge numbers of landing craft.
Were these lessons not learned at Tarawa in 1943?
How much, if any communication was there between the Pacific TO and the ETO? I have no data on this.
Well, they partially already had been before Tarawa - note that the US landed armour with the first wave, and had very heavy fire support (for the time at least). The problem with relying on Tarawa to provide the lessons is simply time. The attack was at the end of November 1943, and Overlord went in at the start of June 1944. That gives you 6 months to absorb the lessons, replan largely from scratch, train the forces and build the equipment for the assault. Given the sheer scale of Overlord and the stakes involved, you’re going to have to push it back into 1945. And that has chronic political and military implications.
All true - but if the landings in Normandy were - as you suggest - completely different from the earlier landings in the ETO and MTO (Sicily, Salerno, Anzio) - why would we suspect the Allies would be foolish enough to try and land i Normandy without a heavy initial bombardment, immediate tank support, airborne landings, etc.? Did they not realize Normandy would be different. I think they did.
In fact, the initial plans for Dieppe did involve a heavy bombardment, the planners asked for both 4 engine bomber support and battleship support, and for airborne landings. They were deleted due to a variety of reasons - politics, the belief among air force and naval commanders that the Raid was a mere “sideshow”, etc.
My feeling on this is that had Dieppe never occurred, all of those elements of the RUTTER plan that were deleted when the Raid became JUBILEE - heavy bombardment, paratroopers - would have naturally been in the plan for Normandy in any event. The reasons they were not included at Dieppe was not ignorance of the problems of opposed beach landings.
I do wonder if Wake Island - the only instance in history in which an opposed landing had been defeated - wasn’t a larger lesson than Dieppe.
But - no offence intended - I don’t “buy” the supposition that the Allies would have been foolish enough to land on a portion of the Atlantic Wall that they had good intelligence on without making the necessary preparations - Dieppe or no Dieppe. After all, many of those some preparations had been scheduled for Dieppe and scrubbed. Some may call that a “lesson”, but that would require the belief that in 1942 they knew they needed heavy bombardment and paratroopers and somehow would have felt them unnecessary in 1944. I don’t think that was the case.
Please excuse my ignorance but:
1 - What was the objective of the Dieppe raid?
2 - What was the plan for recovering the raiders back to safety if/when the objective had been met?
TIA
- Something of a matter of arguament - see thread!
- Back over the beaches the way they came - it was basically a Commando raid writ large.
Arguably it was to demonstrate to the Russians that we were doing something. Crerar, the Canadian corp commnder, lobbied hard for Canada’s participation, ably supported by Mackenzie King, who wished to give Canada the appearance of a vigorous war effort without incurring the casualties of 1917. The argument that it taught valuable lessons was rather rationalising after the event. Admiral Baillie-Grohmann, who was replaced as the SNO Afloat by Capt. Hughes-Hallett after he protested the plan, commented that the post-operation summary, ‘Lessons Learned From The Dieppe Raid’, could have been better entitled ‘Lessons Learned By Hughes-Hallett’, and that virtually all of them could have been absorbed by reading the various Combined Operations pamphlets.
In order of achieve some real succes I think that it would need some 2 or 3 thousand more men at the landing.
Churchills In action ¡¡¡
An extract from “Churchill infantry tank” by Bryan Perret/ Ospreys.
Cheetah, one of the Churchills wich climbed the seawall and was engaged in fierce battle with the german gunners.
[.jpg"]](http://www.tropaselite.hpg.ig.com.br/34[1)
Sergeant, Calgary Regiment (14th Armoured Regiment), 1st Army Tank Brigade; Dieppe, 19 August 1942. The men of this Churchill tank regiment taking part in the disastrous Dieppe raid wore BD and WE 37 accoutrements. A number of tanks were disembarked, but their traction was hampered by the slippery shingle beach and they were all knocked out, mostly close to the waterline. Our figure is based on a tank crew sergeant seen there, desperately fighting with revolver in hand. His open blouse reveals a surprisingly modern touch – a sweatshirt with the regimental badge printed on; a German photo of a prisoner of the Fusiliers Mont-Royal shows that at least one other unit followed suit. The regimental badge is worn more conventionally pinned to his black armoured troops’ beret.
The white tank right sleeve badge of the British Royal Tank Regt is visible in some photos of the Calgaries – it is not worn here, but note the regimental left shoulder lanyard. Their non-regulation UK made shoulder title, with ‘CANADA/THE CALGARY REGIMENT’ in dark blue on lighter blue, seems to have been the only regimental title worn by units at Dieppe. At this date the 2nd Inf Div wore the white-on-khaki ‘CANADA’ title (of both straight and arc patterns), above their royal blue rectangular divisional patch with an added World War I scheme of ‘battle badges’. The 4th, 5th and 6th Inf Bdes were identified by the colours green, red and dark blue respectively. The senior battalions had a coloured disc above the blue patch (Royal Regiment of Canada/ Black Watch/ Fusiliers Mont-Royal); the intermediate battalions, a half-disc butted down against it (Royal Hamilton LI/ Régt de Maisonneuve (absent)/ Cameron Highlanders); and the junior battalions, a shallow triangle (Essex Scottish/ Calgary Highlanders/ South Saskatchewan Regt).
(© Osprey Publishing. Extract taken from Men-at-Arms: 359 Canadian Forces in World War II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Ranger_Battalion
The first Americans to see active combat in the European theater of World War II were forty-four enlisted men and five officers from the 1st Ranger Battalion. Dispersed among the Canadians and the British commandos, these men were the first American ground soldiers to see action against the Germans in the infamous Dieppe Raid. Three Rangers were killed and several captured. The first American soldier killed in Europe in WWII was part of the Dieppe Raid, Ranger Lieutenant E.V. Loustalot. During the mission, he took command after the British Captain leading the assault was killed. Loustalot scaled a steep cliff with his men, was wounded three times, but was eventually cut down by enemy crossfire in his attempts to reach the machine-gun nest at the top of the cliff.
The first efforts to stop the German infiltration of Europe were by the 1st Ranger Battalion. Attempting to prevent German occupation of seaports in North Africa, the 1st Ranger Battalion spearheaded an invasion at the Port of Arzew in Algeria. This was accomplished by executing a surprise night landing, silencing two gun batteries, and opening the way for the capture of Oran.
Wreckage on the main beaches. Body in centre of photograph (wearing canvas leggings and light coloured jacket) is US Army Ranger Lieutenant Joseph H. Randall, one of 50 Americans who participated in the Raid as ground troops. German photo, via PAC.
Now that is a good post, its a pity that this guy hasnt posted more as he has something positive to add.
Thats probably the most associated pic with the raid. Good one nick.
Impressive picture…he seems to be mortally wounded not far away from his LCT.
the Germans were not impressed by the Churchills that fell into their hands, and their post-raid report commented [paraphrase] ‘we have little to fear from this new British tank’. In retrospect the puny 2-pounders, and even the 6-pounder, were unlikely to make any dent in the anti-tank defences of the port. An AVRE with a petard mortar might have done, but they didn’t exist then.
A few more images.
